Spicy Baked Chicken Curry | Madhur Jeffrey

For all the years of cooking, making chicken curry remains to be one which I haven’t quite mastered. It doesn’t matter what recipe I follow, the outcome usually doesn’t really live up to the genuine chicken curry I’ve tasted in Indian restaurants. I enjoy a thick curry sauce that’s both flavorful, balanced and spicy. Can never have enough of a good curry!

To face it head on and tackle the challenge, I’m breaking down a chicken curry recipe from Madhur Jeffrey. Meanwhile, I attempt to identify the characteristics common to a good chicken curry. Briefly, I’ve concluded a list of improvements on the Indian chicken curry:

• Always skin the chicken. According to Jeffrey, skin has never been popular in India because it gets soft and flabby in stews. At the same time, the flavor of the spices could penetrate the chicken much better. Furthermore, the chicken is usually cut up in fairly small pieces. (I neglected to do that.)
• Making a thick curry sauce requires the correct frying (bhuno-ing) and browning of the ingredients. There is no flour in most curry sauces. The “body” comes from the rich brown paste resulting from frying onions, garlic and ginger in a heavy pot.
• Roast the spices until they darken and emit their “roasted” aroma. In this baked chicken curry recipe, mustard seeds are browned in hot oil until they pop. Notably, the curry specifically calls for whole spices (not ground) such as: cinnamon stick, cardamom pods and whole cloves.
• Reduce the sauce (see the recipe below for details) together with the chicken curry in the oven for about 25 minutes. To me, it’s a toss up between the chicken or the curry sauce as to which is tastier. It seems like I can never have too much of the curry sauce, especially when it attains the ultimate consistency and flavor. There’s nothing more satisfying than licking clean a plate of yummy curry!

As far as I can tell, the plates look unusually clean, except for some inedible remnants of the whole spices. I need to repeat this recipe a few more times to get good at making the curry according to the approach outlined above.

Print Recipe

Baked Chicken Curry | Madhur Jeffrey

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• FOR THE SAUCE:
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp garam masala (see notes below)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp chilli powder (I double to make it more spicy)
• 100ml/3½fl oz single cream (feel free to use more)
• FOR THE CURRY:
• 4 boned, skinned chicken breasts (weighing approximately 560g/1 lb 4oz in total)
• salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 5cm/2in piece cinnamon stick
• 6 cardamom pods, cracked open
• 6 cloves
• 140g/5oz onions, cut into fine half-rings
• 2.5cm/1in piece fresh root ginger, peeled and grated
• 1-3 hot green chillies, cut at a diagonal into fine strips
• ½ tsp black or yellow mustard seeds
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• cooked basmati rice, to serve
• GARAM MASALA:
• 1 tablespoon cardamom seeds
• A 2-inch (5-cm) stick of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon black or regular cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon whole cloves
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1/4 of an average-size nutmeg

Instructions

1

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2

Make the Sauce: Put the tomato purée in a bowl and mix with one tablespoon of water. Add all the remaining sauce ingredients, in the listed order, mixing as you go. Set aside.

3

Sear the Chicken: Spread out the chicken breasts and season them generously on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Put three tablespoons of the oil in a non-stick frying pan and place over a high heat. When hot, add the cinnamon, cracked cardamom pods and cloves. After ten seconds, add the chicken breasts in a single layer and brown them lightly on both sides. Remove with a slotted spoon and place in a single layer in an ovenproof dish. Set aside.

4

Make the Chicken Curry: Add the onions, ginger, and green chillies to the same frying pan and fry them in the residual oil until they are golden-brown in colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and spread evenly over the chicken breasts.

5

Add the remaining one tablespoon of oil to the frying pan. When hot, add the mustard seeds. As soon as they pop (this will be just a few seconds), add the garlic and stir. When the garlic starts to brown, pour in the sauce.

6

As soon as the sauce heats up and starts bubbling, pour it over and around the chicken without displacing the onion mixture. Place the ovenproof dish, uncovered, in the oven and bake for 25 minutes.

7

Serve immediately with basmati rice.

8

To make Garam masala: Place all the ingredients in a electric coffee grinder. Grind for 30-40 seconds or until all the spices are finely ground. Store in an airtight container.

Notes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/ovenkimurghichickenb_76546